WMS18 - Tinsley Building

The Tinsley Building used to be where the old drive-thru lanes are beside the bank building

In September 1932, Robert H. Plummer leased the entire first floor and opened a department store on September 10th. The Blue Bird ice cream parlor had to move out to accommodate this. 

Plummer apparently didn’t stay long. On February 23, 1933, he announced plans to move the store to the Pickelsimer Building (SBW11). He would be moving into the former location of the Houston Furniture Company.

The above and below photos are a find because there aren’t many pictures of the Tinsley Building. Above, you’ll see a small portion of the Brevard Drugs sign below the first window. The words “Transylvania Trust Co” appear over the entrance to the bank. There’s a building behind the bank (as yet unidentified), and a grocery store on West Jordan at the southeast corner of the Jordan/Caldwell intersection. The picture isn't fully cropped because of some details that would be left out - like a small part of the drug store sign. The colorization is a bit sub-par, but the details in most of the photo are good.

There were certainly other tenants during the next few years, but there’s not much evidence regarding who they were. Judson McCrary, a real estate broker, was there because a May 6, 1938 article mentions that he was leaving the Tinsley Building and moving into the “lower Clayton building on West Main Street.”

Just a couple of months after McCrary’s move, the Transylvania Times (July 21, 1938) announced that W. R. Smith, the owner of Smith Furniture Company, had purchased the building. He had no plans for the facility except to use one of the rooms for storage.

Remember that Plummer moved out in 1933, displacing the Houston Furniture Company in the Pickelsimer Building on Broad Street. Nicholson's Shoe Shop, who may have been in WMN18 the previous year, moved "next door to the bank" in September 1934. The only building on Main Street "next to the bank" was the Tinsley Building.

In May 1939, it was announced that Houston Furniture had leased the Tinsley Building and was occupying it. They combined both downstairs spaces into a showroom, remodeled the front of the store(s) and added show windows. Another occupant who was there when they leased it, Whiteway Dry Cleaning, moved out to the Clayton building.

A few months after Houston Furniture leased the building, Walter Hart, the Sanitarian for Transylvania County, had offices there.

A big change came in 1941 when Brevard Drugs moved into the building. Although the June 5, 1941 issue of the Transylvania Times said that the formal opening of the drug store was in the Pickelsimer Building, other evidence indicates that this was in error. They moved into the first floor of the Tinsley Building. Ads in the Times on June 5th (and others in future months) said it was “Next to Transylvania Trust Co.”

Like Plummer’s, it doesn’t seem that Brevard Drugs stayed very long in the Tinsley Building. Two years later, on June 3, 1943, an ad for Ruth’s Beauty Shop in the Transylvania Times invited people to visit them in the “Building Formerly Occupied by Brevard Drug Co.” To add to the confusion, there was another mention of the drugstore almost two years later, on March 1, 1945. The Times said, “Brevard Drug store has moved into the room formerly occupied by Kinsland & Wells on Main Street.”  Maybe the Brevard Drug Store had no affiliation with the former Brevard Drug’s. “Brevard Drugs” was not found in any telephone directory from 1947 to 1996. In an advertisement in the August 25, 2008 edition of the Transylvania Times, a Brevard Drug Company announced that it was “now locally owned and operated” and that it was at 518 South Broad Street.

In 1944, a branch office of the U.S. Employment Service opened on the second floor of the Tinsley Building. The Union (calling themselves the Brevard Style Center) occupied the storefront on the right side in 1945.  That same year, optometrist Dr. E.M. Dings fitted glasses on the second floor - but only on Thursdays & Saturdays. The 1947 telephone directory shows that Slack's Clothing was in the building, probably in one of the first floor storefronts.

In the early 1950s, attorney's Fisher and McCoy had their offices on the second floor, as did the North Carolina Highway Commission. Slack's Clothing was still there. By the mid-50s, there were notices in the paper that Alcoholics Anonymous meetings were taking place there. On May 28, 1956, Patterson’s Department Store temporarily moved into the building from WMS12 while their store was being remodeled. They were only there for two weeks.

On January 24, 1957, Transylvania Trust (WMS19) announced that it had purchased the building and was going to raze it to make room for a drive-in window and parking lot. They hoped everything would be completed by June 1st.